If you love the idea of having a whole collection of vintage-style journaling supplies arrive ready to use — tea-dyed pages, handmade embellishments, lace, doilies, altered playing cards, ruffle rolls, and more — this is a flip-through of the packs I've put together for my Etsy shop. Each pack contains over 100 pieces, all made by hand, and every one is a little different.
What we cover
A full flip-through of the vintage journaling kit — the journal itself, all the loose pages and ephemera, the embellishments, the trims, and the handmade elements. This isn't a tutorial; it's a look inside so you can see exactly what's there before you decide.
What you'll learn
What's inside the journal included in every pack — a naked, undecorated journal measuring just under 9 inches by just over 4½ inches, with 44 pages of intentionally mixed paper types (writing pages, different weights and textures, a back pocket) designed to spark ideas rather than prescribe a direction.
The handmade paper elements I include, including:
- Tea-dyed postcard-style pages, some watercoloured and stamped, some distressed
- Tea-bag-covered map pieces (I have a tutorial linked below if you want to make your own)
- Tea-dyed, embossed, distressed envelopes — thick, good quality, they hold up beautifully
- Small decorated paper bags, including two in gold
- Folded calligraphy papers and vintage sewing pattern pages
The booklets and mini items
- A small pink notepad-style booklet
- A scrappy little booklet with mixed pages inside
- Corner flip-up pockets — pre-made and ready to glue into the corner of a journal page for both storage and a flip-up journaling surface (tutorial linked below)
The embellishments and trims, including:
- Two ruffle rolls at 1 metre each (tutorial linked below)
- 1 metre of braided decorative trim
- A heavenly trim flower
- Assorted bows, including one with a pre-punched hole so you can thread a brad straight through
- Faux patchwork stamp punchouts
- Epoxy circles with vintage images — the kind I use on journal covers
- A small piece of lace
- A set of doilies: 4 large crochet doilies, 4 smaller ones, plus 11 additional doilies of different sizes and styles in a separate bundle
- A little gold heart
The loose ephemera and journaling spots, including:
- Altered playing cards (tutorial linked below)
- Tea-dyed mini tags — 5 of them
- Distressed ticket stubs
- Book pages in multiple languages — Italian, German, Croatian, Serbian, Dutch, and others
- Original book pages (not reprints — see the note below on variation)
- Distressed quote pages from books, suitable as journaling spots or cover elements
- Large print images for use as covers or to back onto tea-dyed paper
- Double-sided pages with bird images on one side and a coloring page on the other
Tips & gotchas
The images on the journals in each pack will vary — same style, same quality, just different pictures. That's because I'm making these by hand and the materials shift from pack to pack. What you see in the video is representative, not exact.
The original book pages are the same — these are genuine original pages, not reproductions, so the year and content will differ between packs. The one I show in the video is from January 1913, but yours may be from a different year entirely. That's part of what makes them interesting, but worth knowing in advance if you had a specific era in mind.
The gold paper bags look a little less gold on screen than they do in person — just so you're not surprised in the other direction when yours arrive.
The corner pockets slip straight into a journal page corner and immediately give you layered storage and a writing surface. The ruffle rolls, trim, and doilies are ready to use without any prep. And if you want to go deeper into how any of the individual elements are made — the tea-dyed map pages, the altered playing cards, the ruffle rolls, the corner pockets — I've linked all the tutorials below. There's also a paper bag journal tutorial coming soon, since quite a few of you have been asking about those.
